Cleanse the World.

Ah, the brooding question in the back of everyone's mind since they were taught about the Mayans. Will 2012 bring the end of the world? The answer? No. (Click "No." to read about other end of the world predictions.) Every generation or 20-40 years or so, people are totally convinced that the world, time and air are all just going to... stop. Wrong.

Lately, the weather's been pretty wild. Japan is timing their next earthquake/tsunami duo like a hostess seats a nine-top at a restaurant. It's not raining cats and dogs but it rains birds, literally. A menagerie of sea creatures  appear in fishermens' nets and float, dead ashore.

These events make me weary, too. Although, it is all part of the Earth cleansing itself. We have to help cleanse the Earth, too. Why do you think the Hippies were so keen on communes, Earth Day and recycling?

This is what we're doing to our home:

Creating continent sized monsters of garbage, every time you toss that plastic water bottle out the window it ends up somewhere it could kill animals or end up changing the ecosystem. Wanna see the impact? Check out the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

To follow the Garbage Patch, fish and birds feed off the patch assume its consumable food. This is what happens,

For more pictures, click the bird.

It's ridiculous how we perceive our one small action as something so minuscule, however, we have to multiple that simple action by 7 billion times. 

Do little things. Pick up the McDonalds wrapper on the ground. Don't toss cigarette butts out the window. Reuse water bottles. Every little bit helps. 

Another bit to tie in the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling wrote many screenplays about the take over of technology. The abundance and the advancement but of course, during his era, it was merely science fiction. Today, we get so wrapped up into how exciting technology is, how it revolutionizes everything and that it makes everything easy. Yet, if everything is easy then we become lazy. Hence the lack of recycling and growth of destruction of our environment. Technology should not make things too easy but be there to aid in strengthening our growth towards furthering our advancement as a society. If we allow technology to become stronger than us, our role/function/jobs in society will be quickly obsolete.

PA Budget Cuts

From the Windows....

Governor Tom Corbett decided it would be a great idea to cut education budgets. Stupendous. Senator Kim Ward, who spoke at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg last week at a town hall meeting commented on the topic of the proposed budget cuts and stated she supports an intelligent society. Well, then. How can she support budget cuts that will freeze teachers salaries, slash budgets and make it impossible to hire new teachers. Not to mention maintain current staff, however Corbett is totally okay with hiking up tuition prices, which according to President Sharon P. Smith of Pitt-Greensburg does NOT cover the cost of education.


Well, looks like it won't be covering much of anything now.


Read on budget cuts.


SPIN

I'd like to make these budget cuts a into a metaphor of the episode "The Lonely". Just as the astronauts had to make sacrifices to make weight requirements to carry belonging in the spaceship, the biggest sacrifice was the most important, his companion, his teacher.

We can't just shoot all the professors and make all the students learn on computers. But...

We are in the Twilight Zone.

Oscar the Cat

Predicting Your Own Death

Smartass twenty-year-old? Or just a really sad story? You decide.

S.1. Ep. 19. "The Purple Testament"

Lt. Fitzgerald

The handsome William Reynolds plays Lt. Fitzgerald a soldier stationed in the Philippines during WWI. Dick York plays Capt. Phil Riker. Lt. Fitzgerald has a special talent, he can see in the faces of his fellow soldiers who is going die in battle. A strange light glows in the faces of the soldiers. He marks four of 44 men. Then while visiting a wounded friend in the hospital he sees the light in his face. Seconds later, he dies. 

Lt. Fitzgerald's Friend, Smitty

Next up in Fitz freaky visions is his Capitan. He warns him to go out on the mission but his Capitan cannot not go so after Fitz leaves the tent Riker takes off his wedding ring and puts in on top of pictures of his wife and his two baby boys. Outside awaits the entire platoon. The men nervously stare at Fitzgerald wondering if their faces are glowing or not. One man freaks out and screams at Fitzgerald asking him to tell him whether or not he's going to make it. Riker tells the platoon there is no one who is a mind reader in the platoon, not even Fitz. The mission goes quite successfully. with the exception of the loss of Capt. Riker. Fitz is given the orders to report back to division for some R&R. 

As he packs up, he takes a double look into a mirror. As he does this... he sees the glow in his own face. He driver of the jeep approaches him and tells him they're all ready to take off. Another soldier tells Fitz that the driver is the most careful driver in the U.S. Army. The driver tell Fitz they have about a four hour drive. Fitz automatically sees the glow in the driver's face and says, "I doubt it." The next scene at the camp, the soldiers here a boom. However, they pass it off as thunder.

SPIN

I've previously discussed PTSD in other posts and how it really truly disturbs soldiers. I lived and witnessed a prime example, my dad. This episode of the TZ is interesting because it exemplifies the effects of PTSD in a war zone environment back in the age when the diagnosis didn't exist. Plus, the fact the William Reynolds is such a gorgeous man with a complicated psyche just makes this episode so enjoyable. So, I checked out the interwebs to see if I could find people who could predict deaths. Unfortunately, Shamanbook.com hasn't been created yet so I couldn't friend request any aboriginals. However, I did find a cat named Oscar.

 He's been a hot ticket for a couple years. This cat was rescued in 2005 as a kitten as raised in Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Providence, RI. Since 2007, Oscar has predicted 25 deaths. In 2010, when the cat was reviewed he had predicted 50 deaths. Animals can smell and detect the radical changes in chemicals in human beings in which allow doctors to give more accurate prognosis. Oscar will walk inside the room of a patient who has a few hours to live then sit outside the door before their death. That is how the doctors can tell. Oscar has been featured in the Daily Mail Online in 2007 and the Telegraph in 2010.

Entertainment Weekly talks to 80-year-old William Shatner about his experiences on The Twilight Zone

I would have reposted the article here but EW doesn't have a Blogger share button. Whomp, whomp.

The Shatner.

S.1.Ep.17. "The Fever"

Franklin Gibbs, played by Everett Sloane, and his wife, Flora Gibbs, played by Vivi Janiss, are in Las Vegas on vacation for winning a contest. Mr. Gibbs hates gambling but loves his wife. A drunken man gives him a coin and Mr. Gibbs uses it in a slot machine. His wife and him start to walk away, when he hears his name being whispered from the slot machine. That night he dreams of the potential money he could win. He abruptly awakes and tells his wife he has to return the tainted money to the machine. He goes back into the casino and plays the same slot machine over and over again for hours. Flora comes out to find him mindlessly feeding the machine. She tries to gently persuade him to stop playing but instead he flips out and tell her to stop giving him back luck. As he feeds the machine, he tells Flora that he believes if he keeps going it'll pay up, he'll win eventually, he can feel it, he knows he'll win soon enough. After losing every single dollar, he flips the machine over and security takes him back to his room. Flora puts him in bed. He's convinced that the slot machine is actually an entity or other worldly being out to get him. Soon enough, Franklin begins to hear his name called by the slot machine more clearly. He opens his hotel door and there stands the slot machine. It corners him to the window and pushes him out the window to his death.














SPIN


Since I'm quitting my shitty waitressing job soon I'm not afraid to write this.

Gambling is a serious problem. One of my managers is an obsessive gambler with the face of the Michael Meyers mask. I'm talking he has a bookee and everything. This dude gambles on everything, too. From scores of games to who's going to get hurt first in the season. He carries around a piece of paper in his pocket with statistics, strange insignia only he understands and he pays more attention to the 20 television sets in the place than the customers do. It's really annoying. He already hates his life and treats all us waitresses like shit. So if he loses or breaks even, you can tell. He becomes even worse. He's my boss. Too bad he acts like a five-year-old alcoholic.

Fresh off the internet press, Post-Gazette reporter, Tom Barnes, wrote about the progress of a law that would make it mandatory for casinos to send statements home to their regular gamblers reporting their winnings and losses for the month.

If this would pass, that would make gamblers see their damage on paper. Like they really want to see that nonsense. The casinos wouldn't want to send those out either, are you kidding? An honest casino is an oxymoron. Psshh. Please.